The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted nearly every aspect of dental practice — including how embezzlement happens. In this timely episode, Prosperident's David Harris, Wendy Askins, and Amber Weber examine how the events of 2020 and 2021 changed the financial threat landscape for dental practices, and what practice owners need to know as they navigate the post-pandemic environment.

Practice closures, staff furloughs, government relief programs, remote management, and rapid reopening all created new opportunities and new methods for financially motivated employees. The Prosperident team breaks down what they observed in their casework during and after the pandemic and what it means for how dental practices should think about financial oversight going forward.

Topics covered include:

• How the pandemic disrupted the financial oversight routines of dental practices
• New embezzlement methods that emerged or accelerated during COVID-19
• How government relief funds (PPP, EIDL, etc.) became a new theft vector
• The relationship between financial stress — both practice and employee — and theft
• How staff changes during the pandemic created oversight gaps
• Why post-pandemic practice busyness makes embezzlement easier to hide
• Emerging patterns in how embezzlers are operating in 2021 and beyond
• The specific countermeasures that address post-pandemic theft patterns
• How to rebuild financial oversight systems that may have eroded during closures

Embezzlement doesn't pause during a crisis — in many cases it accelerates. This episode equips practice owners with the awareness and tools to stay ahead of the evolving threat.

To learn more about protecting your practice, visit www.prosperident.com or schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

This episode is a special cross-post from the Dentist Money™ Show, hosted by Ryan Isaac of Dentist Advisors. Ryan sits down with Prosperident founder David Harris for a frank conversation about one of the most financially significant threats dentists face over their careers: embezzlement.

The statistics are stark — the majority of dental practice owners will experience embezzlement at some point during their careers. Yet most dentists significantly underestimate the risk and overestimate their ability to spot it. Ryan and David cut through the myths, profile what a real embezzler looks like, and give listeners the specific warning signs that should trigger action.

Topics covered include:

• Why the statistical likelihood of dental embezzlement is higher than most dentists realize
• What actually motivates employees to steal from people they work with every day
• The profile of a typical dental embezzler — and why it rarely matches the stereotype
• The most common warning signs that embezzlement may be occurring
• Why dentists who see warning signs often do nothing — and the cost of delay
• What to do when you notice something that doesn't add up
• How Prosperident's investigations typically unfold
• The financial and emotional impact of embezzlement on dental practice owners

This conversation originally aired on the Dentist Money™ Show, a podcast dedicated to helping dentists make smart financial decisions across their careers. Learn more and listen at dentistadvisors.com/dentist-money-show-podcast.

To speak with Prosperident about protecting your practice, visit www.prosperident.com or schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: The Dentist Money Show Podcast - Embezzlement Warning Signs You Need to Know

Hey, Dennis Money Show, listeners. This is Ryan Isaac. I'm very excited about today's interview. This is with the great David Harris from Prospera. I'm not joking when I say we talk about murder and fake names and disguises and lies and fraud and deceit and Inbezzlement, it's crazy how common Inbezzlement is in dental practices. Grab a pen and a paper, take lots of notes you're not going to want to miss this episode. Just a reminder, please join us in our free Facebook group where we post questions and polls and have great discussions. Go to denestetvises.com slash group and join up or if you want to chat with us, go to Denestetvises.com, click on book free consultation and schedule appointment to chat with one of our advisors today.

You can also call or text us at 833DDS plan. Thanks again for tuning in to this episode with David Harris. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. Consult an advisor or a condenser-owned due diligence when making financial decisions. General principals discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by denestetvises or registered investment advisor. Welcome to the Denest Money Show, where we help Denest make smart financial decisions. I'm your host, Ryan Isaac, and I'm here today with a new friend of the show. Mr. David Harris of Prospera, then. How you doing, David?

Good. How are you, Ryan? I'm doing well, man. I'm, uh, how's we here to say? And I'm excited to have you on the show. You've worked with some of our clients in the past. Been listening to other interviews you've done lately, so I'm excited to have you a lot of questions here. So. I'm not your mate. Yeah, that's the point here. I'm excited to have you on here. So the first thing I'd love for you to, and you do this all the time,

but I'd love for you to give a little background on where things started from you. I've learned for myself that you've had a really cool background. What's up with, I wrote some of these quotes down. You called yourself, uh, you were a self-proclaimed, miscreant, and a self-proclaimed under a cheever. And now you run this, like, massive, the biggest dental fraud and bezelman firm in the, in the world, probably, right? Yeah, you know, when I was in high school, I think my parents just spared that I would ever make anything of myself. And I actually ran into my own history teacher a couple of years ago, and he remembered me. And, and because I was so undistinguished and, and I said to him, yes, I remember you trying to teach me history, and that it was painful for both of us.

So, academically, I wasn't much of an achiever and got in some trouble and ended up joining the army because it sounded a whole lot better than jail. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I remember you're in that. Had a, had a chance there to, um, really sit and think about how differently criminal's not than everybody else. And I, I had a job where I was breaking into military bases as a way of improving the security. Really, that was, uh, you kind of, you're describing your background's like my dream job. Like I watched those shows where they take X-Cons and they bring them into the FBI to, you know, no offense to everyone I work with. I love my job, but that's kind of my dream job, you know, that's really cool. So you kind of, you kind of did that. I did that. And that's when I really started thinking about how, as I say, criminals approach the world differently than everybody else.

And that knowledge is something that I still use every day. And certainly our, our good investigators are really a depth at putting themselves in issues of a criminal in a certain situation. And saying, okay, if I was going to steal in the situation, how would I do it? Yeah. And, and that's what, that's what distinguishes a skill investigator from an average one. Yeah. And, and yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking that way. And then I had one of those chance occurrences. I, after I left the army, I worked for a bank for about five years. I had, my job there was sitting at home and sort of thinking about what I was going to do next. And I got a call and it was a guy who had been in high school with who was now a dentist. And he said to me, I think my friend has person stealing and I have no one else to call.

So I really wasn't very busy that day. So I said, all right, I'll come over to the practice afterward. So once he closed up, I came over and we found what she was doing fairly quickly. This was back in the days before computerization. So the old pegboard system that said, Okay, you know, some folks with great hair, remember, finally. The way I found this investment wasn't exactly what the doctor thought I was going to do. I mean, I got, I got into the practice and he shoved the ledgers at me. Yeah. And I said, now we're going to approach this little differently. I'm going to think like this person's probably thinking, well, what I started doing was going through that. And taped underneath one of her drawers, they found her cheatbook.

Oh, my god. That's like mafia style. Well, a lot of ambassadors, you know, especially if they're, if they're carrying on for a long time, need to write down what they did. Yeah, he track of what's real and what's what's fiction. Yeah. And in those days, the, the cheatbook was like a notebook. Wow. Now it's more, more commonly, you know, an Excel spreadsheet on the computer. I like on the phone or something. Yeah, it was a book. So I found a cheatbook. And once I found that, a whole thing. I'm truly really fast. So one of the things I'm thinking right off the bat now that I've always wondered is when you actually help somebody discover that it is, in fact, happening.

How, I mean, how do they feel like what's, what's kind of the emotional is there a relief? Is it relief mixed with crap now? What? Or I mean, how does that, how does it work? In part, I think it depends on how suspicious they were. I mean, we get people who call us and say, I don't really have any particular reason to think I'm that risk. But the possibility of investment bothers me and I can like to know. Yeah. And when we, if we find investment in those situations, which happens sometimes, they're shocked. Yeah. And they've, you know, they've really been, been looking for reassurance that it's not happening. Yeah. And they have the people at the other end of the continuum who are pretty suspicious already. And, you know, they want to get an expert involved in it. And in those cases, Relief is probably the best emotion. What the two groups share though is is really a sense of violation.

This is not crime. like when somebody, your car's parked in a parking lot, somewhere, and somebody smashes up the window and takes a place. This is personal. This is done by somebody who you know really well, who's daughter's wedding, you are at three months ago, not really realizing that you were funding it.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's a sense of violation. Yeah. OK, so I want to still give some context around how you, you let into this and maybe just two minutes about prosperity then too, you've said before, and I think this is very true in this subject, and probably a few other financial subjects

You asked — and Prosperident answered. In this audience-driven episode, Wendy Askins, Amber Weber, and David Harris work through a mix of pre-submitted and live questions from dental practice owners and team members on the topics that matter most: embezzlement, financial oversight, suspicious employee behavior, and what to do when something doesn't feel right.

Q&A episodes like this one offer something that structured presentations can't: the unscripted, specific, real-world questions that practitioners are actually wrestling with. The questions in this episode reflect the genuine concerns of dental practice owners across North America, and the answers carry the weight of Prosperident's decades of investigative experience.

Questions addressed in this episode touch on topics including:

• What specific behaviors or patterns should raise suspicion
• How to handle a situation where you have a gut feeling but no hard evidence
• What to do — and not do — before calling an investigator
• How Prosperident's investigation process works and what to expect
• The role of police and prosecutors and how criminal cases actually proceed
• Whether it is possible to recover stolen funds after embezzlement
• Common myths about embezzlement that the hosts dispel
• Prevention measures audience members are wondering about

If you have a question about embezzlement or financial security in your dental practice, contact Prosperident through the website at www.prosperident.com, at www.dentalembezzlement.com, or by phone at 888-398-2327. You can also schedule a consultation directly at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: You Ask, We Answer

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris, talk about the issues that matter to you.

Join us on a regular basis for back-lives, and we wanted to have a special edition of our Prosperident Power Hour. You ask, we answer. So we wanted everybody who's attended, and people on the dental world to submit their questions to us, so that we could take the time to go over some important facts with you, our special audience. Back to you, Dave.

I wanted to start tonight by just reintroducing us, because it's been a while since we told you about who we are, and we just kind of assume sometimes that everybody knows. I'm David Harris, I'm the CEO of Prosperident. I've been investigating dental and bezel-lit now for 31 years, and a couple of weeks. I'm a CPA, but please don't hold that against me. I'm also a certified fraud examiner,

and what's called certified in financial forensics. My two cohabosts, who I think of privately as the Texas Pernados, because they both live in Texas, I should introduce, and I'll start with Amber Weber. Amber spent years as a dental hygienist, and then moved in office management, and then consulting, and then I has been with us since 2018. We have three levels of examiner here,

which are called fraud examiner, senior fraud examiner, and supervising examiner. So Amber was promoted, actually, we did it here on one of these episodes to senior examiner. She's our newest senior, but has a whole lot of background. Anyway, she's a terrific gal. The other thing I'll mention is that this whole webinar series

was Amber's idea, and she came to me with it, and said, well, you know, people have all this downtime, and I've been arguing about it. My response was basically, you know, I don't know if anybody's interested in that. Anyway, we did it anyway. We've had over 3,500 people to our webinars, and it was absolutely Amber's branch up.

So that's co-host number one. Co-host number two is Wendy Askins. Wendy is one of our longest serving investment investigators. She started with us, actually, I ended up looking up today in 2012. So eight plus years for Wendy. Wendy is one of three people who hold the title here of supervising examiner. So there are most senior examiners and tackle some of the really ugly files.

Wendy also heads our orthodonic investigation department, and she has a very deep background in orthodonic and really, you know, understands that business like nobody. Tonight, we get to have a little surprise for Wendy, because we're going to present her with something tonight. One of the things that we recognize that prosperity is milestones for when people have uncovered a certain amount of investment. And it's my great honor tonight to present Wendy with her $2 million pin.

It's a gold pin with the prosperity. But do you want to reach through the screening, grab it? Yeah, you can. Here's the actual pin in how it walks. I was worried Wendy that if I opened the box, people would think I was going to propose to you or something. And I have a wife and she has a husband. So let's just take that off the table now.

But anyway, it's a tremendous honor to recognize Wendy's achievement. And I'm covering the $2 million of investment. And what I have to tell the audience, Wendy, that they probably wouldn't know otherwise, is that the actual investment in those cases was much, much, much higher than that. And all we're counting is what Wendy counted in each case before she started. And when you're investigating a investment,

there's always a point where it just doesn't make sense to keep looking anymore. And that happens actually fairly early in most investigations. And we're going to talk about dental insurance coverage for this little while. And I think the audience will see exactly what I mean. But that's the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Anyway, congratulations Wendy. And it's truly an honor to be working with you. Thank you so much.

Okay, well, I'm going to ask, again, thank you so much Dave, that means so much to me. I'm going to try to complies myself. If you know me, the person you know I'm a cryer. So anyway, so today's webinar, you ask and we answer. Our webinar is going to be a little bit longer this evening, because we really want to spend time answering your questions and detail. Now, so if this is your first webinar,

you're not aware what we did was we send a charge out over social media and in the past webinar that we did last month, we're going to be asking, what would you like us to talk about more? What do you want to hear more about? And so lots of people send in questions and we picked the top 14 to the 15 questions. So we're going to be answering those for you today. And we're also going to be answering some live questions at the end. So if you think of anything during this session, please, don't hesitate to chat it out to us and we'll be able to answer that for you as well.

So like I said before, we get a lot of questions. As investment becomes more the topic of conversation. And honestly, as people are becoming more comfortable in talking about it, even our clients are becoming more comfortable in getting their testimonies or telling about their experience, as you saw with some of the individuals in the beginning before we started the webinar. What we're finding are people just have a whole lot of questions. And during this webinar, we're not able to answer all of them because we get barrage by questions. So we either end up missing them, getting a slight overview of the answer,

or we have to return the answer in an email. So this is a wonderful opportunity. that we're taking tonight. We're going to slow down and we're going to be detailed about the top 14 to 15 questions that were sent into us by your colleagues. Take it away Amber. All right. So our first question is a question that we get asked many times. Sometimes before we complete an investigation. Sometimes if we're not even completing an investigation and it is easy, I'm going to fire this employee anyway. I also think they might be embezzling. Do I need to wait until after profanity finishes? So we did a webinar on this that you can reference to, uh, called breaking

up as hard to do. But the simple answer is no. You do not have to have proof or catch someone red handed to terminate their appointment with you. There are some things you need to be aware of though that if you're in an outwell state that allows you to terminate an employee, you need to make sure you have reference and there's not legal ramifications such as unemployment, discrimination. But the main thing to remember here is terminating an employee should not make reference to possible on business. So in the past we discussed that this, that you need to have documentation and policies and procedures in place that gives you a good foundation for terminating that employee and gives you good reasoning

Dentistry trains exceptional clinicians. Business ownership is an entirely different skill set — one that most dentists acquire, if at all, through expensive trial and error. In this episode, Prosperident's Amber Weber, Wendy Askins, and David Harris are joined by Dr. Wayne Kerr for a wide-ranging conversation about the financial and managerial challenges that come with owning and leading a dental practice.

Dr. Kerr brings the perspective of a practicing dentist who has worked through the learning curve of practice ownership and emerged with hard-won insights that most dental school curricula never cover. Together with the Prosperident team, he addresses the practical skills that make the difference between a practice that thrives and one that merely survives.

Topics covered include:

• The business skills dental school doesn't teach — and where to get them
• How to transition from thinking like an employee to thinking like a business owner
• Financial literacy for dentists: what you need to understand and why
• Managing and leading a dental team effectively
• How to delegate intelligently without creating financial vulnerability
• The relationship between strong management and reduced embezzlement risk
• When to seek outside help and what kinds of advisors are worth the investment
• Building systems that let your practice run predictably and profitably

Strong practice ownership skills are not just about profitability — they are also the foundation of a practice that is harder to steal from. A well-managed practice with clear systems and engaged leadership is a far less attractive target for would-be embezzlers.

To learn more about protecting your practice, visit www.prosperident.com, www.dentalembezzlement.com, or call 888-398-2327. You can also schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: Honing Your Practice Owner Skills

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris, talk about the issues that matter to you. He named into a family. So happy that you are able to join us this evening. And spend some time with us. I'm Wendy Askins, Prosperident, Superbizing Examiner. My co-host this evening, our Amber Weber,

a Superbizing Examiner at Prosperident. David Harrelitt Harris, our fearless leader at Prosperident and Dr. Wayne Kerr, is joining us as a special surprise tonight. Leaving. Hi Wayne. Hey Wayne, how are you? Great to be with you tonight. What a privilege.

Thank you. So good to have you. Awesome. And it's my pleasure to introduce a guy I've known for years. He is one of the finest men to ever walk the planet in my mind. His name is Wayne Kerr. He is a former practicing dentist. He's a master of the Academy of General Dentistry,

which is a pretty elite group. He's now a teacher and educator and speaker. Wayne is hands down the coolest senior citizen I know. He's got a lifetime of experience. And we were just delighted to have him share it with us. So Wayne, it's great to have you. And we look forward your contribution tonight. If you're a great pleasure and privilege to be here.

Thank you for your very time words. There's a challenge in being a practice learner. In addition to doing good clinical dentistry, because if that part doesn't happen, nothing else is really important. You wear a lot of hats as a practice learner. And you're stretched a lot of ways. And really what we're going to do tonight is try to give you a little bit of help and some tools in handling some of these areas.

And I'm going to quote a couple of people. I'll start with Harry Truman, who said the buck stops here. And I guess another way you could put that is that crap rolls downhill and as a dental practice learner, you're going to forever live in the valley. So how do you make it work? Well, there's a business strategist who does a lot of work within us. His name is Chuck Blakeman. And Chuck wrote kind of a seminal book a number of years ago.

And the title of the book is making money as killing your business. Now, this book is not specific to dentistry, but it certainly fits. And the temptation is always to, or the trade-off, that you always make is between, I spend the next 20 minutes doing something inside somebody's mouth, or I spend the next 20 minutes doing something that runs my business. And what I'll say is that most dental practice owners suffer from a predisposition to the first one. That's the happy place. That's where you want to be.

And that makes it easy to make the decision in terms of doing something billable in the next 20 minutes. David, can I explain to you a short story? Please. So it's my first week in my first practice in 1978. I have, this is my new dental supply rep. And I leave the app at the door. And I come out.

And I spend several minutes meeting him and getting to know him. And telling him I'm looking forward to working with him through the coming years. He says, you can't be here talking to me because you're not making any money. Unless you're back in the app at the right spin on the bird and grind it down. Somebody's tooth. And I said, no, I think I will learn a great deal from you through the years with regard to new products, new techniques, new pieces of equipment that can help me perform a higher level, provide a greater level of service, being more efficient, and therefore,

or productive, and therefore more possible. And that's my story that I learned early on in my career that you got to work on your business as much as you work in your business. And that's a very important point. Absolutely. And very theoretically, everybody who's here listening to us tonight could be doing the same thing tonight. Good night. I mean, they could be spin in the bird and treating people.

Some time investments that do not directly generate you revenue are, are still vitally important. And we're going to talk about a few of those tonight. We are going to talk about a few of this. And the first one starts with accountability. That's owners accountability by the way. In my entire career in dentistry in orthodonics, it's been heavy in delegation. And I've loved that because I've been able to do so many different things within different practices and different businesses. But delegation does not need application on the part of the business owner.

The business owner still has to follow up on that's delegated task to make sure that they're being completed accurately. The very first casualty of investment is transparency. And that's Amber's quote. Oh, Amber. Listen to that again. The very first casualty of investment is transparency. I'm often baffled about what sometimes when I speak with clients and I'll ask them questions and they'll just say, I don't know. You know, and of course they didn't know the investment was happening, but there's no follow up.

And then, you know, someone once told me, you know, I ask the same question. I ask for this employee to explain these transactions to me for over a year. And she just told me, don't worry about it. I haven't taken care of. You go back in the clinic and you do your thing and let me worry about it. So again, there we see there's no transparency in the transactions that are being completed. And also, you know, we often talk about our teams being families like our daytime family and she's my work BFF, however you want to call them. But I'm baffled also how it is that there are some people who get threatened if you try to make a suggestion to them or you offer advice to them

or you ask them to train another employee so that you can do cross-training. This is an issue because in best-lers don't like for anyone to be in their space. They want to be alone and they have to be secretive and they are not transparent. But accountability starts from the top. The greatest, what's the word I'm looking for Dave? Detection is the greatest what?

What's deterrent? Detirent. Oh my gosh I failed the test. What? Detection is the greatest deterrent to investment. So if an investor feels like you're on to them or you might be detecting some issues with that, just step up and ask them that question. Because accountability starts at the top. It starts with the business owner asking questions, making the staff members aware that the business owner is looking at certain reports or they are doing a reconciliation and they're looking at what goes in the bank. And it doesn't come naturally for healthcare givers because we want to trust each other with our full hearts. We want to give our hearts to our patients

You've noticed something. A number that doesn't add up. An employee who seems defensive when asked about finances. A patient who says they paid but your records show otherwise. What do you do next?

The steps you take — and the mistakes you avoid — in the first hours and days after suspecting embezzlement can make the difference between a successful investigation and prosecution and a situation that collapses before justice is served. In this essential episode, Prosperident's David Harris, Amber Weber, and Wendy Askins walk through exactly what to do — and critically, what not to do — when embezzlement is suspected.

Topics covered include:

• The most important rule: do not confront the suspect before calling an investigator
• Why acting on suspicion too early destroys evidence and tips off the embezzler
• How to preserve the financial records and data needed for a successful investigation
• Who to call first — and who not to call
• What to tell (and not tell) other staff members
• How to continue operating your practice while an investigation is underway
• When and how to involve law enforcement
• What the investigation process looks like from start to finish
• How to protect yourself legally and financially during and after an investigation
• Realistic expectations: what outcomes are possible and how likely each is

The wrong moves at this stage are irreversible. This episode is required listening for any dentist who has ever had a nagging feeling that something in their practice isn't right.

If you suspect embezzlement, call Prosperident before taking any other action. Visit www.prosperident.com, www.dentalembezzlement.com, or call 888-398-2327. Schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: What To Do If You Suspect Embezzlement

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris. Talk about the issues that matter to you. We've got a lot that you can join us. What we're going to talk about today is picking up the pieces and what to do when the unthinkable happens. When you become a victim of imbezblemist and fraud happening in your office.

So today's topic is going to be really interesting. We're going to share information and stories for those of you who maybe haven't experienced this yet. So that if that day ever comes, you are prepared to know how to prepare yourself. Thank you, Amber. Hi, Dave. It's good to see you.

I think to see everyone else that's joined us today. I am so excited about this topic. Having worked with so many clients and walked them through that moment in time when the unthinkable has happened to them. And they find out that someone has been and does link from them. And they're just totally confused.

And they've got all of these thoughts whirling around and they're had, what do I do? Where do we go? What else is going to affect my family and my business? Today we're going to get some of those answers to you. We're going to walk you through what happens when you first become suspicious? What happens when you confirm your suspicion?

And how you confront. So from suspicion to confrontation, we're going to walk you through all of those. We're also going to walk you through the avenues of restitution that are available, but similarly and criminally. And we're also going to talk about how to manage your personal and your business reputation.

Because after you become the result, that's also very important to how you, the messaging that you control the message that goes out from that particular experience. When you have that sinking feeling, and you wake up in the middle of the night with a start and suddenly it becomes clear that maybe that trusted staff member of yours isn't so trustworthy after all.

The first thing I'm going to tell you is that when you have that feeling statistically, you're right about 70% of the time. Trust your instincts. When I get talking to doctors who call me and have that suspicion, one of the first questions I ask them is this, let's say hypothetically, this person is not still. How do you feel about them otherwise as an employee? In other words, would they keep their job or not if

the measurement was now? And sometimes, then this will say to me, you know what, they're far from my best employee anyway. So I think if they're not stealing, they probably don't have a job here. And then one of the things that I say to them very quickly is, well, okay, so if they lose their job if they're stealing and they lose their job if they're not stealing,

this might be a time to look at firing. In other words, why wait until the end of our investigation they'll live that person go? Sometimes having evidence of a measurement is helpful in getting through the termination process without, for example, getting sued. And if that's the case, then firing now may not make sense. But if you have an employee who is fireable now,

and you're not happy with them, and you also think they're stealing, well, let's just do what's gonna happen anyway and get them up in order. The next thing I'm gonna say is this, if you have suspicions about somebody, it's really vital that you not let that person know that you have concerns. And it was a case where there was a murder.

And this happened in Annronville County, so just outside Baltimore, Maryland, and somebody named Shantay, Dr. Hickman, ended up murdering her doctor because Shantay thought that the doctor was gonna catch her stealing. And I mean, this is a, this is a terribly tragic story. And what makes it even worse than it would be otherwise is that they amount that she had stolen was $17,000.

If somebody's going to go to jail, you know, the list of things they would not do to prevent that from happening's pretty short. Now, thieves don't always think things through. If somebody's embezzling from you and your practice burns down, they're gonna be the number one suspect. I mean, they will get caught in punishment, but that isn't necessarily consistent with how they think.

Here are some of the things that doctors do when they suspect an investment to get them caught or get them uncovered. The first one is you go to your receptionist or your office manager and you ask for a whole bunch of reports you've never asked for before. And then the next thing you do with those reports is you take them into your private office,

you close the door, you phone your CPA and you spend an hour on the phone your CPA. If I am a thief and I'm stealing from you, every morning when you come into the practice, I look at you and I ask myself the question, does she know that I'm stealing? And anything like kind of actions I'm talking about here will cement in my mind that you are.

Of course, one of the cardinal sins here is to bring onsite investigators. One thing, if you've been watching our webinars that you know about us is that we do everything we can to avoid setting foot in your practice. And almost everything that we do is done at a distance. And the internet is very much our friend in that. But onsite investigators,

you know, it's very hard to stick a geeky account and looking person in your practice for four days and claim that they're there to fix your compressor.

So we don't want to do that. And we're going to talk a little bit later about confronting the suspect. Certainly when you have suspicions or even discovery of investment is way too early to confront a suspect at that point. You need to know a lot more than you do at that juncture. And all you're likely to do if you're in the 70% who are right

is tip your hand prematurely. And if you're in the 30% where they get suspicious and it's not true, then you're going to ruin a relationship within a place. So there is a time for confrontation. but it's not early on. And we all know that Dennis love to fix things quickly. This is a case where you really need to be a little bit patient.

So if you do kids somewhere, someone red handed, just like you were talking Dave, you can't let your emotions get in the middle of it. So this slide's kind of talks about a childhood story that we're also familiar with Pinocchio. Pinocchio has celebrated 80th anniversary this year. And going back to the thought of Pinocchio, this is where, as a practice owner, you can really get your lesson on honesty. So in the story of Pinocchio, every time the situation rose, the story always changed. But when you catch someone red handed, this is when you have to have your ducks in the row and have everything ready

As 2021 began, dentistry was emerging from one of the most disruptive periods in its history. The pandemic had shuttered practices, altered patient behavior, strained teams, and created extraordinary financial uncertainty — but it had also opened up new opportunities for practice owners willing to adapt and lead. In this forward-looking episode, Prosperident's Wendy Askins, Amber Weber, and David Harris are joined by Kirk Behrendt, CEO of ACT Dental, to discuss where dentistry stands and how practice owners can seize the moment.

Kirk Behrendt is one of dentistry's most energetic and insightful practice coaches, known for his ability to help dental teams reconnect with their purpose and build practices they love. His message coming into 2021 was one of optimism, strategy, and focused action.

Topics covered include:

• The state of dental practice as the profession emerged from pandemic disruption
• The specific opportunities that the post-pandemic environment created for dentists
• How to reset and rebuild team culture after a period of intense stress
• The practice metrics that matter most as production ramps back up
• Leadership lessons from the pandemic: what it revealed about dental practice owners
• How to think about growth, investment, and capacity in an uncertain environment
• The financial oversight habits that protect practices during periods of rapid change
• Kirk's framework for building a practice with intention and joy

About Kirk Behrendt: Kirk is the CEO of ACT Dental, a leading dental practice coaching organization dedicated to helping dentists build better practices and better lives. Visit www.actdental.com to learn more about his work.

To learn more about protecting your practice from embezzlement, visit www.prosperident.com, www.dentalembezzlement.com, or call 888-398-2327. Schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: Hello, 2021: Full Steam Ahead

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris. Talk about the issues that matter to you.

Friends, I am so honored to be the first Prosperident representative to tell you happy new year. I hope you're all doing well, and thank you so much for joining us this evening. My name is Wendy Askins, and I'm the supervising examiner for Prosperident. My co-hostess is Amber Weber, and she's also a fellow Texan of mine. Amber is the Senior Fraud Examiner, and then we are joined by our fearless leader and CEO of Prosperident, David Harris from Halthax, Canada.

We're thrilled that you have joined us this evening to go full steam ahead in 2021, and we've even got a special guest joining us this evening. So Amber, why don't you get us started? So, both of them have had 2021. We want to give you some great information about moving forward this year. As a company, Prosperident is best known for investigating and development, and we love the opportunity to help owners establish protective systems for their practice. So we want to help you even if, and development isn't occurring,

we have decades of experience, and all of our great experts, we come from many different fields of dentistry. So we have a lot of background and expertise that we can, we come together and help you as the practice owners, people who work in practices, people who have interaction with dental practices, we want those practices to be as safe and protected as possible, because we truly do love the field of dentistry. Our background and experience with many different types of specialists and different people in the dental industry has given us so many opportunities and windows into hundreds of successful

practices annually. So we want to be able to deliver as much information to those of you that we haven't got to work with yet. And now let's introduce our special guest for tonight. His name is Kirk Barron. Kirk is a lot of things. He's the CEO of a company called Act Digital that provides terrific consulting to people. He also hosts something.

I've been privileged to be on a few times called the best practice as show. And I did an episode with Kirk the other day and it was fun. We just laughed and carried on and it was a ball. So we are so honored to have him with us today. He's got amazing ideas about how to make your practice the best it can be. And I really look forward to what he has to say. So let's talk about the state of the world that we're in right now. You know, this past year was so bad.

I just feel like I'm blessed even if I'm alive. And I still have a roof over my hand and I have a job that I love. Sometimes you just have to get down to basics with gratitude and like gratitude, your heart. But anyway, let's talk about what the ADA says the state or the financial state of dentistry is as of about the middle of December. Now the health policy institute of the ADA conducted polling for several months last year after the COVID crisis began. And they actually had two parts of polling.

One was the recovery and renewal polling for the business of dentistry. If that's what you want to call it. And then they also had a consumer poll asking just regular everyday consumers of dentistry. How they felt about the safety of being in the dental office. And what they found out and what they published as of the middle of December is that the good news is that the 99% of dental offices are now open. A little bit less than 40, I'm sorry, a little bit less than half of the business is recorded business as usual. Ironically, as far as patient volume is concerned and adonics and oral surgeons reported the highest patient volume.

And we're going to do something a little bit different in this webinar. And since we have our gas curve, what we're going to do is we're going to have a little discussion at the end of each slide. So that we can have some other ideas about the points that we're trying to make. And one thing I'd like to hear is what you guys on the panel think about why endodonics and oral surgery happened to be like, I'm not a patient volume, that seems a little odd to me, but we'll get around to discussing that in just a moment. Anyway, there were major enterprises that responded to the polling. And commented that they were about 22% down from pre-COVID patient volumes, which honestly, if you think about what we had to go through last year as an industry, just being down 22% is not that bad. I've heard, you know, some estimates of 40 to 50% down, but thank God, it's just 22% of pre-COVID volume.

Now on the consumer side, what we're seeing is 86% of pollsters said that they had either number one, then an adonol office, since COVID started happening, or number two, they would have no hesitation into going into an adonol office. So that's 86%. So we're doing pretty good there, but there are still those patients who are concerned with their health about 14%. And they're going to hold off until a vaccine is readily available to them. And then as employers and employees, what we see is that employment is at almost 100% of what it was pre-COVID, which is awesome as well. So for our panelists, some of the questions that I have, and you guys can just answer randomly about what you think about this, in the report, it also stated that only 1% of the practices are offering point of care, rapid COVID testing. Do any of you happen to think that that's going to be an issue for... for dentistry, are we gonna have to start offering that? Wendy, I think it's the vaccine rolls out

that's gonna get less important. Do you mean what comes across from some of this, is that most people rightly believe that dentistry is safe that they can get dental treatment. And I remember when COVID first flared up, you asked about the oral surgeons and the endodontists. And I guess my theory is there sort of the least elective end of dentistry.

Usually when somebody needs the endodontists, they either need the endodontistory or paintails. So I think that's why, but I think dentistry's done a great job of reassuring the public that you're safe in our care. Yeah, another question. And I hope the endodontists and oral surgeons in our audience don't take offense to them.

But I totally get what you're saying. Another correlation that I've made, which is interesting is a possible opportunity with the fact that we're almost at 100% employment, pre-COVID employment, but yet we're still at 78% of patient volume. What type of opportunities do you think that's ringing? Yeah, can I chime in here just a little bit?

This episode is a special cross-post from the Nifty Thrifty Dentists platform. Dr. Glenn Vo — the dentist-entrepreneur behind the massively popular Nifty Thrifty Dentists Facebook group and community — interviews Prosperident CEO David Harris on the topic that dental practice owners need to understand: embezzlement.

Dr. Vo's community of cost-conscious dental professionals gets to the point. In this conversation, David Harris delivers exactly what dentists most want to know about embezzlement — the facts, the risks, the warning signs, and the practical steps — in a direct and accessible format suited to busy practitioners.

Topics covered include:

• How prevalent embezzlement really is in dental practices — the statistics dentists need to know
• Who embezzles, and why the typical embezzler is not who you'd expect
• The most common methods used to steal from dental practices
• Why embezzlement is so often invisible to the practice owner for years
• The warning signs that should prompt action
• The single most important thing dentists should do to protect themselves
• What to do when you suspect something is wrong
• How Prosperident's investigation process works
• The financial and emotional aftermath of confirmed embezzlement

About Dr. Glenn Vo and Nifty Thrifty Dentists: Dr. Vo is a practicing dentist and the founder of Nifty Thrifty Dentists, a thriving online community dedicated to helping dental professionals save money and run smarter, more efficient practices. Visit niftythriftydentists.com to learn more.

To speak with Prosperident about your practice, visit www.prosperident.com, www.dentalembezzlement.com, or call 888-398-2327. Schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: What you REALLY want to know about embezzlement in dental practices -- David Harris interviewed by Dr. Glenn Vo

Support DDS brings you the virtual team solution to support your office and increase your efficiency. Tests such as ensures verification, phone support, administrative tasks, anything that is repetitive that bogs down your team. Support DDS can do that. Your phone office can focus on a patient experience and bring the personal touch you want to project. The Nifty Deal is $200 off your monthly service. To get this deal, you have to go to supportdds.com and mention Nifty thrifty. Hey, what's up everyone? It's Dr. Glenn Vowe and this is a special edition of the Nifty thrifty Dennis podcast.

It's called the Nifty Deals. This is where we spotlight a particular deal that we negotiated for you, the dental professional. So sit back, relax, listen to all the awesome info and get ready to get hooked up with the Nifty deal. Hey, what's up everyone? It's Dr. Glenn Vowe and thank you so much for tuning in because today this morning I have a very special guest. David Harris. He is the dentist's investment expert himself. David, thank you so much for jumping on today. Hey, it's great to be here.

You know, your company is called Prospera Dint. And you're like that resident expert when it comes to investment. Just one of those words that we don't want to say and we don't want to think about. It's almost like it's probably as bad as PPO, probably worse than PPO sometimes. But David, let's start with this for those who, and I've been following you and I've been using your resources and I'm always learning something. But for those who do not know what you do, right? And I've already kind of spilled the beans in the beginning. But for those who don't know who you are and what you do, they've just really briefly talk about what you and your company do for the dental industry. Absolutely. We do two things.

We investigate when a dentist thinks that somebody is stealing from him or her. So typically it's a staff member, but it could be, it could be somebody like a bookkeeper, you know, an external bookkeeper accountant or what happens probably more than people want to think about is you have several doctors in the group practice. And one of them is is getting paid more than they should. And coincidentally, it's typically the one who handles the finances. Yeah, I mean, it's just some of the, some of the case studies that you have that you have posted have been like jaw dropping and eye opening. But for those who are watching right now, if you have any questions, there's two ways you can do this. You can post it in the comments and I'll read it to David or you can message to me. If you, if you actually have, if you're in like a situation and you're like, okay, I don't want people know what's going on. I can message to me, I'm have my other screen up and I'll feel those questions to David, but man, we're going to dive right into this David, let's let's shock some people because you've shocked me when I've watched some of your webinars. Let's just shock some people let's let's throw out talk about some of the, some of the case studies that you've presented in the, in the past and let's just go over let's start with the ones that that to this day still have you drop in your draw.

What a job, what do you talk about it. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about some some cases there. So, you know, cases can be noteworthy here for a lot of reasons. Of course, the big one is dollars. Yeah, the biggest and bezel man I've ever seen in a dental practice was about two million dollars. Two million dollars. We have a, we have part of our website called the Hall of Shame and I, I think you, you spend a little bit of time there. This is part where we profiling bezelers and we have about six hundred and eighty of them profile. And we have this part of our Hall of Shame. We call the million dollar club. So that's people who have more than a million dollars from their practice and they're about seven of them.

And then we have the half million dollar club, which is quite as exclusive but has as pretty plus of its members. You know, the average amount that if these steals to the point where they get caught from a dentist is about a hundred thousand dollars. That's what average. Wow. And let's talk about that. Let's talk about the Hall of Shame, right? That two million dollar. I mean, I'm just, I'm just wrapping, I'm just wrapping that around, I'm wrapping my mind around it. But let's talk about that particular case. Was it was it was the office manager? Was it the financial coordinator? Whatever you can can share, talk about that and how did they end up in bezeling two million dollars? Well, first of all, it doesn't happen in a weekend. You know, that, that happens over a protracted period of time.

The typical large dollar thief is somebody who's already been with the practice for a long time before they start stealing. And normally the office manager, you know, this person enjoys the doctor's trust. The doctor involved tends to be somebody who's very clinically focused and very hands-off in terms of the money part of the practice. And you know, that's a recurring factor in most big thefts. A lot of the people who get hit by big dollars are really high achieving dentists. You know, they're, they're multi-skilled people who, you know, do a lot of full-moth reconstruction and implants and stuff like that. And if, you know, if you're practicing at that level, it's pretty all consuming. And you need to spend a lot of energy on, you know, building and then maintaining your knowledge base and kind of complex interactions with patients because obviously the way you

the way you talk to a patient who's contemplating spending $80,000 on a full-moth job is a little bit different than the conversation you have in the opportunity with somebody who might need a crown. Right. They tend to be clinical high achievers and what they give up typically to get there is some some level oversight on the practice finances. Yeah, because they're probably delegating, they're focusing on what they're really good at and they're delegating in their. trusting some team members and they're like, okay, I'm gonna let them handle it. And I'm just gonna, I'm just focused on producing a lot. And also, I guess with those type of practices,

they're producing so much, they're bringing so much money in. And when you bring in that much money in, it's kind of easy to kind of tuck up these things here and there, right David? It's a lot harder to steal from a struggling dentist than it is from one who's financially comfortable. And if your audience thinks back to

when they started practice right out of school, they had big student dad and, they were probably at that point watching their pennies pretty carefully. Fiber 10 years later, people have gotten some distance from the wolves that were chasing them before and they'll go more relaxed financially. And that's kind of the point where you can be a little more vulnerable.

Yeah, absolutely. Guys, for those who are tuning in just now, see a bunch of people jumping on, if you have an

Who better to ask about dental practice finances than someone who lives inside the numbers every day? Mara Johnson, a bookkeeper specializing exclusively in dental practices, sits down with Prosperident CEO David Harris for a conversation that bridges two perspectives that rarely share the same stage: the financial records specialist and the embezzlement investigator.

Mara brings the view from the bookkeeping desk — the patterns she sees in dental practice financials, the questions she asks, and the anomalies that catch her attention. David brings three decades of investigative experience. Together they walk through the warning signs, the financial habits, and the oversight practices that protect dental practice owners from theft.

Topics covered include:

• What a dental bookkeeper sees that a practice owner typically doesn't
• The financial warning signs most visible in a practice's books
• How embezzlement typically shows up — or hides — in dental financial records
• The role of an outside bookkeeper in detecting and deterring theft
• What a practice owner should expect from their bookkeeper in terms of oversight
• The questions every dentist should be asking about their own financials
• Practical steps practice owners can take right now to improve financial visibility
• How Prosperident's work intersects with and complements bookkeeping services

About Mara Johnson: Mara Johnson is a bookkeeper specializing in dental practices, based in Texas. Her firm, MJ Bookkeeping, provides financial management and bookkeeping services tailored specifically to the needs of dental practice owners. Visit www.mjbookkeepingtx.com to learn more.

To speak with Prosperident about your practice, visit www.prosperident.com, www.dentalembezzlement.com, or call 888-398-2327. Schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: Dental Bookkeeper Mara Johnson interviews Prosperident's David Harris

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris. Talk about the issues that matter to you.

Hi, I'm Mariah Johnson with MJ Dental Bookkeeping. And I am very honored to have David Harris with us today. He is the CEO of Prosperident and is the dental investment expert. And it's been doing this for, I believe, three decades. He is very much a sought after speaker and is the author of dental investment, the art of theft and the science of control. And he has taught me everything I know about dental investment. So it is a huge honor to have you here.

It's great to see you, David. Great to see you, Mariah. I'm really flattered that you asked me to do this. Likewise, well, thank you. So a lot of people ask me, is this really a problem in general practices? So what would you say to that? It definitely is pinning down the exact numbers is a little bit of a challenge sometimes. And I'll maybe touch on why in a minute.

But it's safe to say that if somebody is graduating from dental school today, there's probably an 80% chance that they'll be embezzled at some point in their career. There's about a 40% chance that they'll be embezzled more than what's. Wow. Wow. The confounding factor in measuring the numbers is that some embezzlement never gets detected probably. And some gets detected but never reported anybody. And those two things sort of make the final number of it elusive.

But the 80% is pretty safe. Yeah, so many people never even know. I just, I think I told you recently about a friend of mine who's dad had a dental practice and was embezzled for 15 years. Sold the practice and didn't find out about the embezzlement. That was almost a million dollars until two years after the practice. So sometimes, Dennis have no clue it's even happening. It's very true. And what I think some of the audience may not realize about embezzlement is how interactive a crime it is.

In other words, how much it is dependent on the person who's doing the embezzling, starting by studying their adversary, the dentist, and saying, alright, what does this person look at? And more importantly, what don't they look at in their practice? And then the embezzler builds a scheme that is designed to bypass whatever the doctor looks at. That's custom made schemes. Well said, yeah, it really is. Well, what are some of the misconceptions? Because I feel like there are so many about how to how to find this and just on the subject in general.

Well, let's start with vulnerability. A lot of dentists convince themselves that they're not likely to be embezzlement victims. And let's face it. Life is more comfortable if you can if you can talk yourself into that. And I hear a lot of reasons why people think they they won't be victims. For example, my staff have been with me forever. Or I live in a small town and really embezzlement is an urban problem. You know, it happens in big cities when you end up hiring people, you don't know very well.

I put that one. Yeah, but all my you know, all my staff started out as my patients. So I know them really well. The thing I'll say about embezzlement, Mara, is that it's a selfish crime. So the person who's doing it doesn't think about their victim or the situation or anything else. It's about me, me, me. I mean or I want. And so there's no there's no immune practice.

There's no practice where the circumstances mean that somebody will never be embezzled. Another one that I hear a lot. And this is a this is a good way to illustrate the point of making is I pity my staff really well. And the typical embezzlement will take between two and four percent of a practice is gross revenue. So on a practice that that brings in a million dollars a year, that translates to somewhere close to forty thousand dollars that an embezzler can be stealing. When a hairdo doctor say that she pays her staff really well, she's talking about sort of one or two dollars an hour above the local going right. It comes nowhere close to scratching that it's right. And then you have the embezzlers who aren't stealing because they need the money.

They're stealing to address an ego deficit. You know, they feel underappreciated by society or more specifically by the practice order. And they're stealing to take what they think they should have received in the first place. And for those people, it doesn't matter what you pay them. But it's almost irrelevant. The real question is what they believe they should be paid, which is invariably a bigger number. You talk in your book a lot about justification. Yeah.

And how, you know, someone that works in a don't practice, they're seeing all that money coming in. They don't know what the loan payment is. The student loan payment for that dentist. They don't know all the expenses they have. They just see that money coming in and so sometimes they feel like, hey, I'm doing all this work for the dentist. I need to get a cut, you know, I need to get a piece of that. So they don't, they don't always appreciate what the dentist has gone through to get where he is. Or she is.

Every staff member over estimates how much the dentist takes home. You know, partly because as you say, some of the overhead is invisible. Right. To the staff, even the stuff that they see, they tend to kind of forget about on a day to day basis because you're right. They see lots and lots and lots of money in there in their in their scale coming in. And they just assume that their dentist is is walking home with the gross revenue, which we and every dentist in the audience knows is just not remotely possible. Yeah. When you think about a dentistry is a fairly high overhead business.

You know, and and for most of your your audience probably overhead in the 60 to 70% range is not uncommon. So the difference between gross and that is significant. But yeah, every embellish or who. I've ever talked to about this, had just a very worked perception of how much the doctor actually took home. And then the student loans alone. I don't know what the average student loan amount is,

but it's quite large six figures, usually. I don't think for somebody graduating today, 400,000 would be out of the question. So you're right. There's a significant investment in education and it has to be recouped. And the other thing that I'll say about every dentist is that they made a choice.

You know, they could have left school after their undergrad degree and become a drug rapper, work for Henry Shiner, something like that. And they chose to forgo that and spend another four years if they're

What does it take to steal a million dollars from a dental practice? More than you might think — and less than most dentists would believe. In this gripping episode, Prosperident hosts Amber Weber and David Harris are joined by five of Prosperident's senior investigators — Sonya Hudson, Tony Ulbrandt, Kelly Paxton, Pat Little, and Scott Clifford — each of whom shares one of the most extraordinary embezzlement cases they have personally worked on.

These are the cases that define careers: the ones that involve staggering dollar amounts, elaborate concealment schemes, and offenders whose stories defy easy explanation. From a dentist's spouse who turned theft into a lifestyle to compulsive gamblers and compulsive spenders who drained practices to fund their habits, each case illuminates a different dimension of dental embezzlement at its most extreme.

Cases and topics covered include:

• Sonya Hudson's case: the anatomy of a seven-figure embezzlement and how it stayed hidden
• Tony Ulbrandt's case: how a compulsive gambler systematically looted a practice to fund losses
• Kelly Paxton's case: a compulsive spender whose lifestyle was entirely funded by theft
• Pat Little's case: a dentist's spouse who exploited insider access to steal over an extended period
• Scott Clifford's case: an embezzler whose sophistication and longevity made for one of the most complex investigations on record
• The common threads that run through all large-scale dental embezzlement cases
• What enabled these thefts to reach the scale they did — and what could have stopped them earlier

This episode is both a cautionary collection and a masterclass in understanding how embezzlement actually unfolds at its most serious. Every practice owner who hears it will look at their own financial oversight with fresh eyes.

To speak with Prosperident about your practice, visit www.prosperident.com, www.dentalembezzlement.com, or call 888-398-2327. Schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: The Million Dollar Club -- Learn from Dentistry's Elite Embezzlers

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests.

So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris, talk about the issues that matter to you.

Monthly power hour. Today we have a special group of individuals, all of our vaminers across Canada and the United States, have teamed up so that we can introduce all of you to the million dollar clubs. We want you to meet and bevelments at a week group. Thanks, Amber. In case you're wondering the third leg of our triangle, Wendy Askins is actually on assignment today.

So she won't be with us. It is just Amber and me as hosts. We're thrilled today to have some guest presenters, and we have five of them. And each of them is a Prosperident Investigator. They all bring different skills and attributes to the table. And we gave them each a very simple challenge. We said we want you to bring one of your most interesting cases

today and talk about it. So we'll tell you a little bit about these people, and then we're just going to turn the floor over to them to talk about their stories. And the first person is Sonja Hudson. Sonja lives in Ontario, Canada. She does a lot of our Canadian case files. And Sonja has been with us, gosh, I think at least at least a year. And I'm probably missing a couple that she'll set me straight.

Sonja is unquestionably one of the most organized people I have ever met. Her mind is just like this gigantic file cabinet. It's just amazing to watch. Our next examiner that is going to share his story tonight is Tony O'Brien. He is one of our U.S. examiners. He resides in Georgia. He is one of three supervising examiners with Prosperident. And I'll leave member of Prosperident's litigation support services team.

The interesting thing to know about Tony, he was one of the first people that helped me when I come on with Prosperident. And he is known to Prosperident as the data analysis with her. He is an Excel spreadsheet guru. So if you ever have an Excel question, he is the person to talk to about it. No doubt about that whatsoever. Next is Kelly Passen.

And Kelly is a little bit different in our team in this sense that almost everybody comes from a dental background. Kelly does not. Kelly's had a tremendously varied and interesting career. She's been a special agent for the United States government. She's worked in a sheriff's department. She was a fraud investigator for Nike, you know, the guys who make the shoes that my son buys.

She's really been in a lot of different facets of fraud investigation. She's also known nationally and internationally for her work in what's called pink color crime. And Kelly is a really celebrated in terms of her research and speaking about female and bezlers. And when we talk about dentistry, of course, we all know that the majority of the bezlers are female. Next is Pat Little.

He resides in Florida. The interesting thing about Pat is he is very well accomplished. He started his career as a practicing dentist. And he had two successful dental practices. From that, Pat continues to complete his education in accounting. And from there, he was able to be diversified in his clinical and dental experience and merge that with his financial knowledge in the dental world. So Pat is very, very qualified.

It's interesting all the facts and the things he knows from the clinical side to the business side. And he's just an all-around nice guy to boot last. And what by no means least Scott Clifford. Scott is another one of our supervising examers. So we have three levels of examiners called Fraud Examiner, Senior Fraud Examiner, and supervising examiner. Supervising examiners are the people that we give cases to that no sane person would accept. And I think Scott will will freely admit that.

Now, I'm just going to mention a little technical challenge with Scott tonight. Scott lives in Northern California. And if you watch the news and all you've heard that wildfires once again are a factor. And Scott was on warning for a couple of days that they were likely to have their electricity turned off. In fact, that has happened. Now, Scott's able to be worth us by phone. Scott is just an amazing investigator. And he really tackles some challenging files and comes out shining every time.

So first up tonight is Sonja Hudson. Sonja, when you're ready, let's turn on your video and tell everybody your story. Well, thank you, David, for those wonderful introductions, including mine. And let's get started. So basically, let me introduce you to Jennifer Leslie. Jennifer Leslie was a demo office manager in a multi office dental practice, who imbezzled over a half a million dollars in approximately three years. I was engaged to investigate and work with the regional police to put together a case.

And predominantly, it was to capture the methodology used as well as the total amount and bezzled. So let's talk about how Leslie did this. Well, she didn't have the normal access of what we see in most of our cases to the accounts receivable or the patient transactions and the dental practice management software. So what she did use was what she had access to. And you'll find that with in bezzlers that they will often find whatever means they can to perform the activity that they need.

So in her case, what she had access to was the accounts payable records. So this was a new case for me. One of the first ones I've done in the accounts payable side. So what she had actually done is she had set up suppliers and vendors in their account in software with names that the dentists would recognize. So they were legitimate names of suppliers and vendors. But many cases, the money is actually were directed into her personal bank account.

Another thing she did was she was in control of payroll and the bonus payment plans and often she overpaid herself on many occasions in this respect. So I had documented just over a half a million dollars in the three-year period. Okay, some of the warning signs and the symptoms that were identified. So the dentist was working as hard as ever

and his practices were running smoothly and he just didn't see the bank balance supporting the work that was being done. And often that's the first clue for Adenis is that there's not enough money in the bank and we're working hard that chairs are full and we don't have any explanation for that. Another symptom that we the dentist identified

was in the behaviors displayed by the suspect. So in her particular case, she had addictive and compulsive behaviors, gambling being one of them. She was also living beyond her means, vacationing, purchases, vehicles, all of that nature. So living beyond her means is definitely a flag for us. And one in particular with respect to her duties is that when she was away f

Every dental practice owner has experienced it: the exhausting search for a great hire, the promising candidate who turns out to be a disappointment, and the nagging fear of bringing the wrong person into your practice. In this practical episode, Prosperident's David Harris, Wendy Askins, and Amber Weber are joined by dental practice coach Penny Reed to share a systematic, proven approach to finding and selecting the right person — every time.

The stakes in dental hiring are higher than most industries. A bad hire doesn't just underperform — they can disrupt your team culture, damage patient relationships, and in the worst cases, steal from you. This episode addresses both dimensions: finding exceptional employees and structuring your hiring process to screen out those who represent a financial risk.

Topics covered include:

• Why most dental practices make the same hiring mistakes repeatedly
• How to write a job posting that attracts the right candidates and deters the wrong ones
• The interview techniques that reveal character, not just competence
• How to conduct reference checks that actually produce useful information
• Background screening: what to check, how to check it, and what to do with what you find
• The behavioral and personality signals associated with embezzlement risk
• How to structure the onboarding process to set new hires up for success
• The probationary period: how to use it effectively and what to watch for
• Building a team culture that makes dishonesty uncomfortable and hard to sustain

About Penny Reed: Penny Reed is a dental practice coach and consultant specializing in team development, leadership, and practice growth. Her practical, results-focused approach has helped hundreds of dental practices build stronger, more effective teams.

To learn more about embezzlement prevention and investigation, visit www.prosperident.com, www.dentalembezzlement.com, or call 888-398-2327. Schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.

Auto-generated transcript: Easy Steps to Your Best New Hire Ever

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests. So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris talk about the issues that matter to you.

Welcome. We are so excited to have our audience with us on our monthly Prosperident Power Hour. Today we're going to talk about a very interesting, but yet challenging topic in dentistry, hiring your best employee ever, the easy steps for your new, for your best new hire ever. I have my amazing co-hosts with us tonight. Wendy Askins, she joined us from Texas. She's our supervising examiner. Our CEO, Dave Harris, way up there from Nova Scotia.

And then we have a special guest, Penny Reed, that we are excited to have you share her wealth of information for our audience. So we look forward to everybody being part of tonight's webinar. I have the job of introducing our special guest tonight. And as you know, we try to bring you some of the thought leaders in dentistry. And this lady is clearly one of them. She's Penny Reed. She has a long time consultant. She and I got started in dentistry around the same time.

I may have beaten her by a couple of years. But the difference was I was an adult at the time and she was 12. Penny has been a consultant and speaker and author for a very long time. Her book is called Growing Your Dental Business. And it's available. I think on Amazon Penny. Yes, it's on Amazon. Aside from all that, Penny has fairly recently started a new job. And why don't you tell us what you're doing, Penny?

Yes. So I still have a few clients with dental coaching institute. I recently joined ESS dental Solutions as their chief strategy officer. And we are also launching an educational platform called dental Zing, which is in its infancy. The brand was just born. So we're super excited about that. Wow, terrific. And we may hear a little bit more about ESS as we go through. But as I say, we're just honored.

Like you wouldn't believe to have Penny with us tonight. What I'll tell you about Penny and I've known her for a long time. There is no BS whatsoever that comes out of her mouth. She has this very direct and almost blunt way of putting things sometimes. And I just adore. So hopefully we'll get to see a little bit of that tonight as well. We're going to talk about a topic that is so incredibly important. So necessary for all of us and yet the majority of us at least in dentistry,

us left writers absolutely hate to do it. So here's what happens, right? You come in on a Friday, back door your office, your feeling good. Because you're going to have a great weekend and all of a sudden, your office manager approaches you and says, I need to talk to you. Now, you don't know exactly what she means, but you know it can't be good just by the turn of her voice.

And sure enough, she gives you her two weeks notice. Immediately panextract your heart as a lightning bolt strikes you in the head. And you would rather go out on the freeway and drag someone out. And on out of their car, into your office and put them in the office manager's seat, then to have to go through hours of resumes and hours of unending interviews. Right? We all get it. But today, what we hope that we can do is to give you some encouragement and give you just a few simple tips and

tricks that will make the process more effective and more efficient. So you can get that long term daytime family member and get them to stay with you. So I love this illustration because this is how we wish attracting the right team. Remember worked. Right? We wish that they would just show up on our door that it would be so simple. But we could simply say, hey, we're hiring and then boom, there they are just like the Easter Bunny used to deliver my Easter basket with mostly things in it that I liked.

Yeah, that's not usually how it, you know, we're younger in a day and time. Although last night, my husband and I watched a movie about Bonnie. So you couldn't really trust, but gotten a little more savvy and sneaky. So they're not just drawn, the right people are not just drawn to the office. As I say, it's a little bit of your gut instinct and a little bit of science or actually a whole lot of science into attracting those right team members. Let's talk about the wrong employee and I took a little bit of conversation here from this Facebook group, which is called trapped in the op. And so this is a group largely of people who are working in clinical positions in practices right now and we'd rather be doing something else. And the person who made this post and I quickly labeled her as cranky pants comma RDH.

Here's what she said. She said, and I can just imagine the whining tone that's going on when this is said and I probably can't quite mimic that. But my office wants hygienist checking out our own patients and collecting money from them when we are short handed at the front desk. And she went on to say, I don't exactly feel comfortable taking money from the patient. It feels weird and unprofessional. The doctor wants us cross-trained, but it's not like assistance and receptionist can do hygiene. And I am thinking to myself, you know, if I had this person working for me, I would shoot myself. Yeah, I think if I can comment on this. Yeah, please. I think what we're putting some of, you know, some of the best clients I've worked with and think about my first business partner who was in still is a practicing dentist.

And I remember when he told me. one of the leadership lessons that he had learned. And that is that he had to be willing to do anything as a leader that he asked the team to do, right? Scrub the toilet vacuum the floor, change a light bulb, not that he did those things all the time. But he had to be willing to do that. And then I think the other is I recently moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I've gotten a new everything, right? A new carer tractor, you know, new new bank, we're figuring all that out. And I had a late appointment a couple of weeks ago and guests who took my payment, the carer tractor, right? So, so if the doctor is willing to do whatever it takes, and that's what we're really looking for, right?

As someone who's open, it's not the fact that they don't want to take the payment, that's the issue, it's that whole mindset of why should I have to do that. And that is something that I don't want to say it's impossible to change with the candidate. But woo, yeah, I agree with you. Having something like that, would spread like wildfire on y